In rural India, millions of households struggle with affordability and reliability issues, even where the grid is accessible. Widespread use of alternative energy sources such as kerosene and biomass have numerous health risks to populations across the world. Solar power is an ideal solution to providing clean, affordable, reliable power to remote parts of the world where the grid connection is poor or non-existent.

While traditional silicon solar panels have become quite cost effective over the last decade, recent advancements in a third-generation perovskite-based solar technology offer an affordable and technologically superior solution, using low-cost, earth-abundant, sustainable materials.

SUNRISE aims to accelerate the development, integration, and adoption of perovskites and other renewable energy technologies by uniting experts from the UK, India, Mexico, South Africa, and Kazakhstan.

Essential to the network's success is the involvement of several disciplines, from physics and engineering to social sciences. We also work with industrial partners such as Tata Cleantech Capital and BIPVco to support the translation of technologies into commercial products.

We are proving the effectiveness of these technologies through a series of demonstrators in rural India. Solar micro-grids have been installed in two schools and a primary health centre, and our first full-scale building demonstrator in Khuded, India, will use solar energy to generate its own energy to be shared by the village residents.